The Web3 Music Revolution: What Fans and Artists Need to Know
Is it a passing fad or here to stay? The intersection of web3 and music is an exciting and rapidly evolving space. With the promise of providing artists and listeners with new tools to connect, experience, and enjoy their favorite music.
Recently, Napster made headlines with the hiring of Jon Vlassopulos, the former head of music at Roblox, and the acquisition of the web3 start-up Mint Songs. While Spotify announces, a pilot program for token-gated playlists for select communities, and Warner Brothers in partnership with Probably Nothing launched ‘Probably a Label’ in Q4 of ’22. The writing appears to be on the wall that the music industry is potentially on the cusp of a major shift toward a more decentralized fan-driven ecosystem.
Napster’s hiring of Jon Vlassopulos back in September ’22 was an interesting signal to the music industry. During his tenure at Roblox, Vlassopulos was responsible for onboarding music talent for virtual performances and ‘experiences’ inside of the game.
Isn’t Roblox a metaverse tailored to kids(I’m using the term kids very loosely here)?
The other question I find myself asking is why Napster? If you are like me your first and last experience with Napster was downloading songs through their peer-to-peer network over dial-up waiting 3.5 days for the song to finish. All while getting those sweet 10 sec previews of what has been downloaded. But then Napster faded into obscurity and was replaced by the likes of iTunes and Spotify.
However.
Their impact on the music industry changed everything. Prior to Napster most if not all were still buying music on CDs and cassette tapes. Napster brought digital and music together. All the music streaming services we use today we can thank Napster for. They did pay the ultimate price in the end because facilitating copyright law fraud isn’t great for business, but I digress.
Why Napster?
Algorand and Hivemind acquired the company and believe they can leverage nostalgic brands of yesteryear to build out Web3 initiatives. You can check out Napster’s Litepaper for a deep dive into what they plan to do in web3. The tldr; Napster wants artists to be able to connect with their fanbases in ways that never have been able to before, through the use of tokens, digital collectibles, and unique rights ownership opportunities.
Lastly, Napster is making waves with its first acquisition of the web3 music start-up Mint Songs. Mint Songs, allows musicians to turn their songs into NFTs for $0 in minting fees via the Polygon network. Their platform will be directly integrated into Napster and looks to be rolled out as early as Q2 of ’23.
Napster has a long road ahead in order to topple giants like Spotify, Apple Music, and Google.
- Can web3 give them enough of an edge?
- Can they build something that isn’t easily duplicated by others?
- Is a nostalgic brand enough?
Napster was a disrupter, but can they do it again? The current use cases for Artists and web3 don’t quite make sense to me. If you are a musician/brand and have a massive following, incorporating elements of web3 into your businesses can make sense. A super limited release of a song that is only available to 1,000 people for a premium only works if you are a megastar.
It’s been my understanding that the major friction point for aspiring artists and the music industry is Labels. They give you marketing and reach and in turn leave artists with very few rights over their music and merchandise. I have not seen a solution in web3 that addresses this problem, yet.
I love the idea of connecting with your community in new and unique ways. However, this is a chicken and an egg moment. If you don’t have a community who wants your digital collectible?
Spotify Pilots Token Gated Playlists
As the landscape continues to evolve, other major players in the industry are exploring the potential of web3. Spotify, the world’s largest music streaming service, is currently testing a new pilot program that allows for token-gated playlists for select communities. The current communities that have access to the pilot program are; Overlord makers of Creepz NFTs, Kingship a virtual band from Universal Music Group’s 10:22 PM label, and Kevin Rose’s Moonbirds.
Currently, the feature is limited to Android users in the US, UK, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand.
I love the idea of token-gated playlists and being able to extend your community into other platforms. That is the whole promise of an interoperable & composable world. We can all connect where, how, and whenever we want. I pray that this pilot program extends beyond a few cherry-picked groups and the broader audience of Spotify users can participate.
Recently, music has had an explosion of new talent and content largely due to the ease of being able to distribute online. No longer do you need a label to publish music, you can just use a service like DistroKid and pay from Free to $20 to have your music on every major streaming platform. Much like how Youtube enabled millions of people to upload videos to the tune of 3.7M videos being uploaded per day, streaming platforms have enabled artists to get their music where their fans are fast and easy.
The problem I see with this and much like youtube is curation. Now that we have all of this noise, how do we know who or what to listen to? Spotify does an amazing job at serving up custom playlists using your tastes to help users discover new music, like their Discover Weekly playlist that every premium user gets once a week.
If you were a DJ and had a strong community you should 100% be all over token-gated playlists. Being able to curate playlists for your community is a value and service, and for the moment, an unpaid one, done purely for the love of the game so to speak. This could offer an entirely new way to support a creator.
Instead of adding another monthly sub to Patreon, you could buy a token and have access for life. It’s kind of a no-brainer assuming the price/value is right. The only pushback I potentially see is if you didn’t have a community, to begin with, and just immediately started charging for access to yourself.
We all have to be cognizant of the fact that we are paying for a premium subscription to use Spotify and now you want to charge me again to get access to something that I can get access to already. You are tastemaking and people need to understand you have taste before they buy.
Probably Nothing
There are other ways that musicians and labels are exploring the potential of Web3. For example, Probably a Label, a collection of NFTs launched by Probably Nothing and Warner Brothers in late 2022 featuring 5,555 passes, which sold out in 7 minutes. Promises to release music from Grammy Award Winning artists and the formation of ‘Studio A’, an incubator that will help community IP come to life.
Studio A is accepting pitches from select NFT communities…Any project accepted into the program will have access to resources from Probably A Label, Probably Nothing, and Warner Records’ ecosystems, including financing, marketing, creative development, partnerships, branding, and PR.
Probably A Label aims to be the bridge between Web2 and Web3 for music.
Press Release via Globe Newswire
Now that may sound great on paper but in practice, not so much. As previously mentioned Probably A Label is currently gatekeeping its services to premium web3 brands. I am not quite sure how they are creating the ‘bridge’ between web2 and web3 or really solving the fundamental problem for musicians in web2 where Labels are often seen as predatory organizations taking advantage of doe-eyed musicians with zero business acumen.
Not to mention the major distribution drawback I see from NFT ownership of songs. This model only works for MEGA stars. A BTS-style recording of a track released as a limited drop to a small selection of holders. If you remember everyone's favorite ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli who bought Wu-Tang Clan’s album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin at an auction for $2M back in 2015. Many were upset that the music would never be circulated or that one person would be in sole possession of the album.
Now that I think of it. The whole thing sounds very centralized. Only a small subset of people get access just because they were early to something. Don’t @ me until we solve some real problems.
We are making great progress, and seeing brands like Spotify start to experiment with web3 features is a major first step. Web3 offers a lot, however, there is a delicate balance that must be maintained between what we know and expect in web2 and how that can be applied in web3. I am a firm believer that web3 will play a vital role in the future of music once we solve some major roadblocks. Sadly, some of the issues being solved today weren’t issues, to begin with.
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